According to someone familiar with the matter, namely Google’s own Eric Schmidt, Ice Cream Sandwich will be available in October or November of this year. The next version of Android (4.0), the one that will combine the Gingerbread and Honeycomb builds, has been known about for some time, but this is the best information we’ve gotten about its release date. You can’t really get a better source than Google’s Chairman, can you?

Schmidt revealed the timing in an on-stage talk with Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff at the Dreamforce conference. In the 31st minute of the two-person snooze-fest the information came out. At 30:20 he says that the update, which is “internally known as Ice Cream Sandwich, for some reason” will be released in October or November. Prior to this reveal the best information about Ice Cream Sandwich was that it was slated for Q4 2011.

So what does this mean? If nothing else, things should start moving quickly, quite soon. We are already well into September and a lot of things have to happen before a new version of Android is released–developers need time to code, carriers need time to test, and so on. So, as long as Schmidt was on the money, Ice Cream Sandwich’ SDK should be available soon, and the OS update will be hitting tablets and smartphones within a matter of weeks.

Some of the rumored changes ICS will bring include an updated launcher, a new app drawer UI, stackable homescreen apps, and, of course, it will bring some Honeycomb features to mobile phones. There will also be some cool features like the Virtual Camera Operator head-tracking API. Plus, as with previous (non-Honeycomb) versions of Android, ICS should be completely open-sourced.

We’d be remiss to move on from this post without noting Schmidt’s quip about the version’s name. He says it’s called Ice Cream Sandwich “for some reason” as if he doesn’t know the reason. It’s not clear if he was just playing it cool for the crowd or if he’s just tired of the Android name game. The versions are named, in alphabetical order, after different sweets, starting at Cupcake.